My mom and I had a wonderful Yule Eve celebration! It was rich with meaning and ritual, and good food as well! We started preparing three weeks in advance with our Yule countdown, and we continued the spiraling into the center theme on Yule Eve. A friend had to cut down a fir tree and she gave us all the branches we needed to make a spiral path to our bonfire:
On the afternoon of December 20th, we chose a place for our Yule log, and then used the fir branches to create the spiral path around it:
We added candles to a lot of glass jars and then placed the jars in the spiral:
We watched the sunset, then went inside and warmed up by drinking wassail that I had made in the morning:
I put on my Yule playlist, we ate a light dinner, and made bells for the following morning:
We got treats ready for later:
We had lots of cookies and candy!
A few hours later, we went back outside and my mom added kindling and wood to the Yule log. She also added a piece that we had kept from last year’s Yule log:
Next, we lit all of the candles in the glass jars:
This is what they looked like with the porch light off:
I love how they looked in the fir branches!
Then, I called the quarters and cast a circle. (For those not familiar with what that means, I created a sacred space for our Yule bonfire.)
My mom lit the fire:
Once the fire was nice and hot, we roasted vegan hotdogs and Dandies marshmallows:
We wanted the flame from our Yule log to burn all night, but didn’t want to stay outside in the freezing cold that long! So, we lit a stick in the bonfire, and then used it to light all of the candles on our indoor Yule log from our countdown:
https://animoto.com/play/Ze4HL7iidNVATocRVUUCPw
We went back outside to watch our bonfire die out:
We saved these two pieces of our Yule log to use on next year’s bonfire:
Finally, we went to bed for a few hours before getting up to greet the sun.
If you missed my Yule countdown posts, you can see the crafts we made and all the lovely treats we ate by clicking the following links:
Preparing for Our Yule Countdown (Making a Yule Log)
Yule Countdown Nights One Through Four
Yule Countdown Nights Five Through Eight
Yule Countdown Nights Nine Through Twelve
Yule Countdown Nights Thirteen Through Sixteen
Yule Countdown Nights Seventeen Through Twenty